Here is a questionnaire that I came across when I was on a course many years ago. It was devised by two clinicians Dr. Eve Bernstein Carlson and Dr. Frank W. Putnam and they call it the Dissociative Experiences Scale-II. It consists of twenty-eight questions about experiences that people may have in their day-to-day lives.
Drs. Bernstein-Carlson and Putnam were psychologists in Beloit College, Wisconsin, USA and the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA respectively in the late 1980’s.
As part of their research they asked people to try and determine to what degree the experiences described in the questions below applied to them, circling a number on a scale of 0% to 100% to denote how frequent the experience is. This would then give clinicians (and the people themselves) an indication of the extent of their dissociative tendencies. (In their instructions, they stressed that the questionnaire does not apply in cases where people are under the influence of drink or drugs)!
The first thing that I noticed about it was that some are lighter manifestations of dissociation and some are at the more serious end. I found that doing the exercise (and circling the appropriate percentage) got me familiar with the phenomenon of dissociation – and I invite you to do the same. It might be handy to print out the page to do the exercise.
1. You are driving in a car, bus or train and suddenly realise that you don’t remember what happened during all or part of the trip.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
2. You are listening to someone talk and you suddenly realise that you did not hear part or all of what was said.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
3. You find yourself in a place and have no idea how you got there.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
4. You find yourself dressed in clothes that you don’t remember putting on.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
5. You find new things among your belongings that you don’t remember buying.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
6. You are approached by people that you do not know; who call you by another name or insist that they have met you before.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
7. You feel as though you are standing next to yourself or watching yourself do something and you actually see yourself as if you are looking at another person.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
8. You are told that you sometimes do not recognise friends or family members.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
9. You have no memory of some important events in your life (for example, a wedding or graduation).
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
10. You are accused of lying when you genuinely do not think that you have lied.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
11. You look in a mirror and do not recognise yourself.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
12. You feel that other people, objects, and the world around you are not real.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
13. You feel that your body does not seem to belong to you.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
14. You sometimes remember a past event so vividly you feel as if you are reliving the event.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
15. You’re not sure whether things that you remember happening really did happen or whether you dreamed them.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
16. You are in a familiar place but you find it strange and unfamiliar.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
17. You are watching TV or a film and you become so absorbed that you feel part of the story and unaware of your surroundings or what’s happening around you.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
18. You become so involved in a fantasy or daydream that it feels as though it were really happening to you.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
19. You are able to ignore pain.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
20. You sit staring off into space, thinking of nothing, and are not aware of the passage of time.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
21. When you are alone you talk out loud to yourself.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
22. You act so differently in one situation compared with another situation that you feel almost as if you were two different people.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
23. In certain situations (sports, work, social) you are able to do things with amazing ease and spontaneity that would usually be difficult for you.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
24. You cannot remember whether you have done something or have just thought about doing that thing (for example, not knowing whether you have just posted a letter or have just thought about posting it).
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
25. You find evidence that you have done things that you don’t remember doing.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
26. You find writings, drawings, or notes that you must have done but cannot remember doing.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
27. You hear voices inside your head that tell you to do things or comment on things that you are doing.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
28. You feel as if you are looking at the world through a fog, so that people and objects appear far away or unclear.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
And one I came up with myself!
29. You do something that is contrary to your values or your conscience because you are afraid, and really get-into-the-zone when doing it.
0% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100%
If you circled the lower end (0% or 10%) you obviously do not dissociate that much, but it is still a useful exercise to do, because the questions are examples of various manifestations of dissociation.